nd the
freedom from the score thus allowed will make your conducting very
much more effective and will enable you to stir your singers out of
their state of inertia very much more quickly. Weingartner, in writing
upon this point (with especial reference to the public performance)
says:[36] "He should know it [the score] so thoroughly that during the
performance the score is merely a support for his memory, not a fetter
on his thought." The same writer in another place quotes von Buelow as
dividing conductors into "those who have their heads in the score,
and those who have the score in their heads"!

[Footnote 36: Weingartner, _On Conducting_, p. 43.]

Study the individual voice parts, so as to find out so far as possible
beforehand where the difficult spots are and mark these with blue
pencil, so that when you want to drill on these places, you may be
able to put your finger on them quickly. It is very easy to lose the
attention of your performers by delay in finding the place which you
want them to practise. It is a good plan, also, to mark with blue
pencil some of the more important _dynamic_ and _tempo_ changes so
that these may be obvious to the eye when you are standing several
feet from the desk.

Decide beforehand upon some plan of studying each composition, and if
a number of works are to be taken up at any given rehearsal, think
over in advance the order in which they are to be studied. In brief,
make a plan for each rehearsal, writing it out if necessary, and thus
avoid wasting time in deciding what is to be done.

In case you are a choir director, learn also to plan your services
weeks or even months in advance,[37] and then keep working toward the
complete carrying out of your plan by familiarizing your musicians
with the material as far in advance of the public performance as
possible. In this way the music is _absorbed_, as it were, and the
singers and players are much more apt to feel at ease in performing it
than when it has been taken up at only one or two rehearsals.

[Footnote 37: The complete list of works to be given by leading
symphony orchestras during the entire season is usually decided upon
during the preceding summer, and somewhat the same procedure might
profitably be followed with a church choir or an amateur orchestra.]

[Sidenote: DISCIPLINE IN THE REHEARSAL]

It is impossible to conduct well unless you have the absolute
attention of every singer or player. Hence the discipline at